About Dogs and Everything Else Under the Sun, even Above It!

Is Your Dog Afraid?

Thank you, Scooby Doo!Dogs’ unique sensing ability extends to and from those close to them. They are the most social of all animals. Happy households, in general, enjoy happy dogs. Dogs do worry– a lot. Fear is maybe the most troublesome. A dog who only “uses” the car in a dead-end trip to the vet won’t go in the car without being dragged or carried, and then vomits and shakes.

This all can be cured by taking happy short trips with happy endings! Those fearful, worried dogs only show their concens in similar ways and by refusing to go into tight areas resembling a car. These dogs need to learn and achieve success with praise. Never end anything without a praise. Always have them do something for praise. They love it so.

Fear is bred from frustration. Avoid frustration! It makes dogs sickly, and probably the worst cause is being shut away from loved ones. That door that comes between dog and his/her human family becomes an object of exasperation.  I have seen many dogs solve this barrier problem by working door knobs with both paws while standing on hind legs– but to magnify the situation, the dog is lured out with a tid bit and the door quickly shuts close, leaving the dog to blame him/herself for always falling for that old tidbit trick. Point is, everyday frustration builds up fear and anxiety, and can lead to illness.

It is not so much the vet or a shot but it’s the dog’s super-active senses soaking up all the doom and gloom in the waiting room. Many owners and pets  there are fearful of the diagnosis, to say nothing of the amount of $$$ in charges. Watch their faces, both human and pet, and you’ll start feeling the same even if not before.

Once again I say, bring your dog in. Teach them things. Happy dog, happy household. Or vice versa! Bye again.

-DM

Posted on February 5th, 2008 by dogmaste
Filed under: Dog Psychology and Training | No Comments »

A Mind is a Frightening Thing… to Waste!

A while back I wrote about how, dogs especially, have an innate ability to sense things beyond the normal senses of smell, hearing, taste, feeling. This “beyond” sense of theirs appears to be quite beyond our understanding. To point out just a few:

  • Epileptics vulnerable to damaging seizures have been successfully matched with a canine companion who has the unfathomable ability to sense well ahead of time the oncoming seizure, warning the person in time so as to take precautions.
  • Certain dogs sense oncoming tornados and other violent storms as well as earthquakes, and our understanding of this ability is so limited we can’t even seem to begin to make reasonable sense or use of it. But we’re busy at making a good effort.
  • We know quite well the dog’s amazing sense of direction even in a storm, but how dogs can find their masters when inadvertently separated by thousands of miles and a considerable amount of time, is indeed incredible, yet it happens repeatedly ever so often.

There is one known factor: LOVED ONES. When the relationship is strong and satisfying is when this “beyond” sense is most complete or assured. That speaks so well of the need to create and nurture a relationship. Christ’s message on earth was love; seems there is a whole lot to that word. One can easily see great power here.

I want to emphasize the opportunities here for other DOG-MASTERS: We now know the dog’s brain has great thinking ability, much like our own. It’s called the neo-cortex. I designed into the Dog Master learning technique the first use of the “dog sound” instruments that literally open up and starts a dog’s mind thinking. It’s a quick and easy thing to now teach our first words to a puppy, or dog of any age. And here starts that all important RELATIONSHIP that leads  to that unimaginable area dogs have in that amazing mind of theirs. Who knows, one day you could be saved from an avalanche, or fire, or car crash, or even a stroke!

Pay attention to your dog’s developing thinking. Don’t laugh, the evidence is there. Start that dog’s mind thinking and you get bonuses we don’t even know about or understand… yet! Keep your dog close by your heart and by your side. It pays dividends!

 -DM

Posted on February 4th, 2008 by dogmaste
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Obsidian: God’s Gift to Early Man

Obsidian, an extremely hard glass-like rock was God’s gift to early man. It was itself formed in the beginning by immense volcanic heat, pressure, and a swirling action, freezing solid instantly, now found in various sized nodules much like the sizes of our many fruits.

When broken, an extremely sharp but curved edge is always formed, becoming a ready implement, knife-sharp and used so many ways from piercing and cutting to scraping and forming.

With thought and practice even needles and hooks could be formed by chipping tiny curved chips and of course, spears, stone doggers, and arrowheads! One can readily see how both skill and brain and man could evolve from working with a substance. So now we’ve come from needles and knives and spears to atoms and elements, and such…

-D.M.

 

Posted on November 29th, 2007 by dogmaste
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Final Notes on Sakawa’s Lariat (1938-_____)

Hi, friends! Did everybody have a great Thanksgiving?

I hope you all enjoyed Harold Wadley’s delightful email which I published in my last post. I couldn’t have said any of this nearly as well as he. Through his own words you all can savor the amazing originality as he, Awi Egwa, tells me the most likely virgin source of the aroma sensed in the lariat by Bob Miller. It was necessary “birth medicine” giving the lariat spirit. Never in all these years did I ever even dream of any of these gems that Awi Egwa reels off, transplanting time and geography with an artistry born of the very region I had known only as a young boy, too enraptured and mystified by this to fully understand it even though I lived it all at the time.

Truly a gift of a lifetime!

Posted on November 29th, 2007 by dogmaste
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Awi Egwa’s Response (The Sakawa Lariat, continued)

So here I am, it’s Thanksgiving Night. Happy Thanksgiving to all!

There is no more opportune time to continue my story than tonight, a night in which we give thanks to everything that is good. And such is Sakawa.

When I last left this story Dr. Bob Miller suggested I contact his friend Harold Wadley (or Awi Egwa, his birth name) up in Idaho, a Native American who employs some of the same techniques with horses as Sakawa did. Having been born on the same  reservation where my Aunt Amy had taught school, Harold Wadley would be– we hoped– a great resource in my quest to search for Sakawa, and to find out more about this wonderful lariat he had given me. Well, we still do not know what happened to Sakawa, but I thought it best to share with all of you Harold Wadley’s (Awi Egwa’s) response. And I quote:

“Greetings from Idaho, Dr. Dare Miller
Sorry about the delay in getting back to you but I’ve been looking for and found old friend St.Claire at Ft. Washakie.  He is not in the best of health but still kick’n.  He is Shoshoni.  He is searching for me of anyone who might remember Sakawa or worked horses like he did.  One major trainer there uses only the so-called modern methods and none of them live with their horses; not much better or different than all those today who see their horses on weekends or in an arena.  St. Claire doesn’t have a phone so I went to the Rez Police figuring they probably knew him and they did!  I also talked to the Arapahoe council member about Sakawa.  Without telling them of your thoughts of possible pronunciation modification of Chiricahua they thought Sakawa was probably derived from that as they have always had some Apache families and intertribal marriages.  The one lady thought it sounded like a Crow name but more likely a mispronunciation of Chiricahua who were noted horsemen, much more so than the Crow.  Who knows, someone there on the Wind River just might find a trail back to Sakawa!  

If anyone could determine the braid and twist of your rawhide left handed lariat it would be Dr. Bob Miller in my opinion as he has such insight to things of detail.  This really comes out in his thoughts and teachings on horse behaviour.  One of my Uncles was a left handed braider and roper.  We always made the back-braid  to the outside (left) when finishing his hondos.  I still use one 31 foot rawhide lariat that my Dad braided some 80 years ago!  I’ve got one that he braided for catching the running horses that is 82 feet and still as good as the day it saw sunlight.  I’ll bet if you rub that lariat of yours real fast between the palms of your hands and then quickly smell it you will detect an aroma of smoke.  We always smoked our ropes after stretching them in the sun.  The fire has to be reduced to coals then the green bark and leaves or needles slowly, not thrown, onto the coals while the rawhide was rubbed with our hands whcih had to be held just so high over the coals to regulate the amount of heat reaching the rope.  Our hands were the control because if it was too hot for our hands then it was too hot for the rawhide.  This smoke of four different species of tree or probably sagebrush in Sakawa’s case was always used as four was medicine, not any other amount.  Sakawa probably used sagebrush, junipter, mountain mahogany and willow.  St. Claire said he didn’t know of anyone who still braided their own ropes!!  So you have a double treasure indeed!  

Those arrowheads are treasures too, if only they could talk.  There is a trail that leaves out of the bottom of Jakies Fork that runs into the Wind a few miles east of DuBois. The trail climbs out of the bottom around the east side of Whiskey Mountain and heads for the Ink Wells and Dinwoody drainages that drop east into Ft. Washakie.  Just as the trail breaks out on top with the rock bluffs dropping into Jakies Fork there was a line of junipter all wind gnarled all along the edge.  One day I was riding Nugget, one of my Morgan geldings, coming North out of the Ink Wells in the middle of a snow storm and STRONG winds out of the SW.  The wind was so gusty and revengeful that Nugget was keeping his nose close to the ground and my shoulders were burning from the wind popping the rain shelf that ran across the back of my slicker.  When I saw the first junipter I headed for it and pulled up in a small depression so Nugget could get behind a junipter as I crawled over and sat under one and able to see down into Jakies Fork.   As I pulled out the tail of my slicker to sit on I felt something different on the surface, just under the half inch or so of snow.  As I brushed the snow away there shining like stars were chips of obsidian!  It was actually more like a small pile, maybe three inches high and twice as much wide where some hunter had also pulled up at a logical place to get out of a storm and sat making arrowheads while watching for game.  There were two trails that came out of the bottom of Jakies Fork that passed just under the line of junipters.  I sat there wondering about the thoughts of the one who had made those chips.  A few days later I was back through there, without a storm, and found other small mounds of chips.  Some had pretty fairly completed arrowheads but were discarded.  Who wants to risk hitting a deer with a rifle that has a bent barrell, so to speak!  I never told anyone about them and maybe they still hold all the thoughts of the one who left them.    

After reading your message and the thought about the sage chickens I even dreamed about them that night!!  The roosters were drumming and Sakawa and my Grandpa were dancing around them!  I could smell the sweetness of the sagebrush.  I even have some sagebrush planted in the front yard (it doesn’t grow naturally in North Idaho).  You take care and thanks for the memories.  I’ll be back to you when St.Claire finds anything.  AwiEgwa  (Awi - deer,Egwa-great) or simply a great deer which is elk. A name given by an Uncle which I don’t normally use as people misuse or get the wrong impression of this “Indian thing” nowadays.”  

Well folks, I have a lot more to say, but it’s Thanksgiving! Till then. -D.M.

Posted on November 22nd, 2007 by dogmaste
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Side Note: A Few More Things From Sakawa

Before I go on with my story of that very special lariat given me by my childhood friend Sakawa in 1938, I would just like to say that it is not the only special “gift” he gave me.

Sakawa was and gave so much to this life. The tracks he left ran deep. He had always a new surprise, like the time he cut a “Y” shape from the outer branch of a young willow  tree, and joyfully showed me how it would turn, as if alive, when held in a certain way in both our hands as we walked forward and back, from side to side, thereby designating a certain spot or area where “her spirit” talked to us through the willow branch.

He would explain, “here she is.” “Her” and “she–” the spirit, was the way he almost playfully described an event of “water witching” or other terms which would leave anyone mostly dumbfounded and wide-eyed.

At times we walked with our mustangs following us like dogs and he would all of a sudden say “obsidian,” savoring, it seemed, each syllable. Ob…sid..i…an! As I’ve mentioned in our website Sakawa came to our homestead for my Aunt Amy’s tutelage. His English was better then than mine.

He would always pick up the obsidian and keep it, sometimes chipping it from the stone outward, bringing it to a cutting edge. Native Americans used obsidian and flint nodules, amazingly for various cutting, scraping tools, and, of course, arrowheads.

In med school I learned about the importance of minerals to our bodies. Well, rocks ARE minerals, and obsidian is therefore both a rock and a mineral. Now while I was a fairly good med student absorbing all this and more, I could not help wondering how much Sakawa knew about that one “rock” when he would gleefully spot one so distinctly as he utters “ob…sid..i…an.”

It’s a shame that our Early American History have portrayed Native Americans as little else but savages. We stole their lands, broke virtually every treaty we had with them. The “Trail of Tears” was worse than the Bataan Death March of World War II. And the killings at Wounded Knee were unspeakable and beyond reason. Shame.

I try to make the effort at amends where I can for I knew differently.

-DM

Posted on November 12th, 2007 by dogmaste
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The Sakawa Lariat (1938-…….)

Sakawa's Lariat, in marvelous condition!In my last post I told you about my long-time friend Dr. Bob Miller’s (DVM) work on natural horsemanship and how his book ”The Revolution in Horsemanship” brought back memories of my own boyhood in Wyoming, and of my Native American pal Sakawa.

Now Sakawa remains a real mystery. He “happened” into my life at an amazingly opportune, and I could not say it enough, most critical time. He solved everything. That alone would seem enough reason to leave an impression, but a whole lifetime? It was not just his incredible skill and knowledge with mustangs, but a girth of Native American psychological sayings which bespoke an insight deep into both Mother Nature, animal nature, and most of all human nature.

At the time I was stricken with surprise and at the same time wonder. Anything he had, carried, or wore, was of great interest to me. But the most awesome, and puzzling, was the time he gave me a lariat on probably his last visit to the ranch. Why on earth would he give me this very special lariat? It was almost like a fine bridle or even a saddle. I could see many coils and knew it was really long. It made a profound impression. I was all broken up and trying so hard not to cry. I remember him putting his left hand to my shoulder. I couldn’t believe it, but even then I got to thank him!

And soon afterwards he simply stopped coming to the ranch. It’s as if he simply vanished. Over the years I have tried very hard to trace him, and still am, with the help of a few cherished Native American friends. And the question persisted throughout those years, why would he give me such a lariat?

Recently all the same questions came back again. I had been talking to my friend Dr. Bob Miller (no relation), the renowned author and veterinarian, and he jumped upon my happening to mention my having a braided leather lariat that had been given to me as a gift so long ago by a Native American horseman.

The Lariat“I need to see it!” he said. So I came down to visit him at his home and brought it with me. When I showed it to him, he took it from me, gently working it between his thumb and fingers, ever so carefully and thoughtfully smelling his fingers, then quickly disappeared out the door.

As I’ve mentioned Bob is the author of many excellent books about horses and horsemanship. I had not necessarily anticipated his reaction to my lariat, but when he came back inside to our small group I saw his dazed pleasure when he carefully laid out the lariat coils on the table. He took one slow, deep breath, and everybody went quiet. He said, “the braid is pure rawhide without end and well over 60 feet long.” He paused, and then said, “it’s made for a left-handed roper.”

Well now! Today’s rodeo ropers, hardly any of them even heard of a leather rope, let alone seen one. And a left-handed one?

Was Sakawa left-handed? Yes, he was! I had not– I don’t think– fully paid attention or known that one more grain of what was Sakawa. Now I wounder if he knew I was right-handed? But still, why would he give me a gift of such workmanship and so very much of him? Was it his lariat? To this day it seems never to have been used. We know it was, but it’s still in its absolutely original and unspoiled condition.

Bob went on to say “we must be in touch with Harold Wadley up in Idaho. Harold was born on the same Indian reservation where your Aunt had taught school. Harold will have a lot more to tell us here. This is really something…”

Ahh, this story continues in my next post. See you all later!

-D.M.

Posted on November 5th, 2007 by dogmaste
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The Horse Whisperers

Dr. and Mrs. Robert M. Miller, and I.My friend and colleague, Dr. Robert Miller DVM, has written an amazingly wonderful book entitled “The Revolution in Horsemanship (and What It Means to Mankind).” I say amazing because it is a book that just everybody will find a real joy. It not only carries the story of a revolution but documents with before-and-after history, and takes you there with on-the-spot color pictures and captions.

I have known Bob for over 40 years and know his work very well. He is the discoverer and perfector of the birth imprinting of foals. He dries the brand-new life with noisy, crinkly paper, soothing the little one with both words and humming.

Bob is a #1 supporter of my Dog Master Learning System and its concepts: to build love and loyalty free of of coercion and and punishment by force. His objectives are much the same. If a foal came into this world with this positive introduction, he/she has a head start. Evidence is overwhelming that these foals become extra smart horses!

For anyone not familiar with this “revolution of horsemanship.” it simply means we no longer “break broncs.” The whole world has discovered that if we treat animals like we humans have been admonished to do– Do unto others as you have them do unto you– we come out way ahead.

When I read Bob’s wonderful book I galloped onto a passage about lariats of the past, back when handlers, cowboys used crude and tedious methods to “break horses.” It all started with roping and tying the horse (or cow) with the lariat. The term (from the Spanish words “la reata”) originates from the Mexican rancheros. When the Spanish conquistadors came to America they reintroduced horses to the New World. Mustangs are wild descendants of the conquistadors’ horses left behind to proliferate. And proliferate they did!

As a boy (a real young cowboy) growing up in the 1930’s I saw herds and herds of them near our homestead ranch, at first not dreaming of their potential for literally good income amidst the Great Depression, and certainly not in the great plains of Wyoming where there was little else but sagebrush, sage chickens, coyotes, and flash floods. That is, until Sakawa came upon the scene and changed everything.

Sakawa was a young Native American, most likely Chiricahua, not much older than I but schooled by his elders in superb horsemanship.  As I often say he “taught” not “trained” wild mustangs to come without a rope (see The Wyoming Years in my website).  What a magnificent sight to behold it was, almost mythical but all very real. 

And Thank the Great Spirit he, in turn, taught me. Sakawa disappeared all too soon but not before I had learned from him how not only to teach a wild mustang to come without a rope, but to ride hard. A mustang soon learned how to jump the barbed wire and literally by itself cut a maverick from the herd for branding.

I demonstrated these “trained” mustangs, selling them for top prices I think not just because they were good but because a 12-year-old did the “training.” I later applied all this technique with dogs and thanks to Sakawa, since 1965 Dog Master Learning System has been showing masters how to have their dream dogs. The world’s dog masters are being shown, proven and taught. Looks like a revolution alright.

-DM

P.S. In my next blog, I will tell you all about the lariat that Sakawa gave me. It’s a story all in itself. Stay tuned!

Posted on November 2nd, 2007 by dogmaste
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